Comment

Comment on It’s rarely been harder for people to find new jobs

thatkomputerkat@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

“The unemployment rate is low by historical standards…”

What if I told you the unemployment rate is a bullshit number tracked by bullshit people with bullshit jobs?

The only people counted as unemployed are those who both check in regularly with unemployment and either are actively looking for work or expecting to be rehired after layoffs.

source

Sort:hotnew top

Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
A common misconception. Below quotes are from www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm, bolding mine. Also, the BLS report has six different measures of unemployment counting various different groups. The “headline number” of U3 counts only people actively looking for work, but other measures count people who want jobs but aren’t looking and people who work part time but want to be full time. Labor force participation is also in there, counting people even if they don’t want to find a job. It’s all reported!

Some people think that to get these figures on unemployment, the government uses the number of people collecting unemployment insurance (UI) benefits under state or federal government programs. But some people are still jobless when their benefits run out, and many more are not eligible at all or delay or never apply for benefits. So, quite clearly, UI information cannot be used as a source for complete information on the number of unemployed.

Because unemployment insurance records relate only to people who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to count every unemployed person each month, the government conducts a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940, when it began as a Work Projects Administration program. In 1942, the U.S. Census Bureau took over responsibility for the CPS. The survey has been expanded and modified several times since then. In 1994, for instance, the CPS underwent a major redesign in order to computerize the interview process as well as to obtain more comprehensive and relevant information.

There are about 60,000 eligible households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals each month, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys, which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people. The CPS sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States

source
- thatkomputerkat@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I have no confidence in these kinds of surveys. How Are people contacted? What kind of person trusts the purpose of these surveys? I couldn’t find anything in that mountain of text saying how they contact these people. Do you know how many people don’t pick up the phone anymore? Do they only call landlines? Do they mail it out?
  
  source
  - Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The survey design and data collection are described at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cps/design.htm and www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cps/data.htm
    
    Some excerpts:
    
    The sample is made up of addresses, not the names of people or families at those addresses.
    
    The CPS [Current Population Survey] starts with a probability sample of about 74,000 assigned housing units each month. Approximately 62,000 housing units are eligible for interview each month, after excluding those which are destroyed, vacant, converted to nonresidential use, contain only people whose usual place of residence is elsewhere, or are ineligible for other reasons. Interviews are completed for about 54,000 housing units. In a given month, about 13 percent of housing units are not interviewed, because of the temporary absence of the occupants (they might be on vacation, for example), other failures to make contact after repeated attempts, inability of people contacted to respond, unavailability for other reasons, and refusals to cooperate.
    
    The Census Bureau will contact each household for 8 monthly interviews over a 16-month period.
    
    Personal visits are typically required the first month the household is in the sample, and they are preferred in the fifth month. In other months, interviews generally are conducted by telephone. Households without a telephone and those which specifically request a personal visit usually receive in-person interviews each month. About 10 percent of eligible households are interviewed via computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) from telephone centers located in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Tucson, Arizona. Field representatives interview the remaining households (approximately 68 percent of households in any given month) by telephone.
    
    Because of the crucial role interviewers have in the CPS, a great amount of time and effort is spent maintaining the quality of their work. Interviewers are given intensive training, including classroom lectures, discussion, practice, observation, home-study materials, and on-the-job training. Interviewers receive self-study training each month, as well as periodic refresher training sessions. They also are periodically accompanied by a supervisor during a full day of interviewing to determine how well they carry out their assignments.
    
    A selected number of households are reinterviewed each month to detect and deter falsification by interviewers. These reinterviews are conducted by a dedicated staff operating independently of the CPS management structure.
    
    source